New Juvenile Prison: Large, 2story, modern red brick and light cement building with front lawn and low shrubbery

Opinion: New, multimillion-dollar jail is no panacea for juvenile offenders

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How one prisoner, sentenced as a teen, sees spending millions on new juvenile jail:

For almost 25 years, I’ve been on North Carolina’s death row. The people on death row who have signed onto my letter protesting that new jail – and more than 40 other men on death row who wanted to sign but were physically unable to position themselves to do so – were confined as children to boot camps, reformatories, detention centers and youth prisons.

Two people shake hands.

Opinion: More reparative justice, less restorative justice is needed

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Some juvenile and criminal justice reform advocates laud restorative justice — it requires those who commit crimes to make amends, rather than merely face a prison sentence — as a potent solution to curbing crime. This model presumes that the wrongdoing is corrected when a defendant’s apology and efforts to take accountability somehow satisfy the victim. Restitution is measured by the defendant engaging in dialogue with the victim, alongside a neutral third-party, for months, if not years.

Teen court: Red brick building with closeup of sign in silver letters reading "Family and Youth Court""

Opinion: Teen-run courts dispense justice, launch legal careers

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For more than 40 years, teen courts across the 50 states have proven their success at letting high school students — serving as lawyers, jurors, bailiffs and judges — determine the real-life sentences of alleged juvenile offenders who are their peers.

Such programs can double as a pre-law apprenticeships for high school students, while also aiming to divert juvenile offenders from incarceration.

Young man wears goggles and tinkers with lab equipment

Opinion: Apprenticeships should be part of programming for juvenile offenders

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A stolen bike. A schoolyard tussle complete with shiners. A neighbor’s garage door graffitied. These seemingly minor incidents can start a young person down the road to delinquency. And once down that road, some young people will find themselves in the juvenile justice system.

Person in a dark, hooded sweatshirt leans on a black outdoor fence railing,

Opinion: Effective anti-violence efforts are trauma-informed

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The past couple of years have been some of the deadliest for many major U.S. cities. Murder rates have spiked and gun sales have surged.

We want the violence to stop. However, our chosen means of addressing violence prevention are shaped by who's leading that conversation. Too often, the results of those discussions have tended to be punitive in nature, resulting in over-policing and mass incarceration. 

Juvenile reform: multiple metal-framed windows of abandoned multi-story building

Opinion: As some detention centers close, reviving “tough-on-crime” is bad policy

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Recent surges in homicides and shootings have prompted some who are opposed to juvenile justice reforms to call for a return to tough-on-crime policies. Those approaches did not make the public safer. They did result in needlessly high incarceration rates for young people, particularly for Black and brown youth. Now is not the time to abandon smart-on-crime justice reforms of the last 20 years as part of yet another race to prove who can be the toughest. We should, instead, be doubling down on those smart reforms.

Opinion: People like me — transformed and propelled by prison life — must be part of the fix for what’s broken in our criminal justice system

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From the courthouse, I was remanded, without bail, to Rockland County Jail. The next morning, I lifted myself off a three-inch-thick mattress, stood and stared out of a window high on the wall of my cell. Blue sky is all I could see. A resolve swept over me: “You need to get through whatever lies ahead so you can get out in the world and discover what life is really about. There has to be a better way to live.” I made that pact with myself.

School shooting: Photos of four teenagers nestled in collection of multi-colored flowers and cards

Opinion: Gun debate should shift toward adult shooters, who outnumber schoolkids with deadly weapons

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Any shooting in a school – like any homicide, suicide, fatality or injury anywhere – unquestionably is a tragedy. For that very reason, we need to stop the self-defeating commentary about gun violence that occurs in schools that hardly tells the whole story: Gun violence in schools amounts to a fraction of gun violence in America. Adults kill more kids than do teen gunmen.

Politicians, media talking heads and others have so fanned the flames on this subject that a Pew poll found that “a majority of U.S. teens fear a shooting could happen at their school.”

Opinion: California juvenile reforms should proceed, despite probation officer lobbying efforts

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As California’s juvenile probation caseloads have plummeted and annual costs of incarcerating a single youth skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands of dollars, juvenile probation departments, nevertheless, have manage to stave off severe budget cuts and layoffs. But that ride seemingly is ending as counties explore less costly alternatives to incarceration and probation.